Energy Secretary Steven Chu said House Republicans are “obsessed” with their repeated requests to get him to grade himself on gas prices.

“This business about grades and everything else is something that I'm not sure why they are so obsessed about giving myself a grade,” Chu told reporters Tuesday shortly after he finished testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

At the hearing, Chu replied to a question from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that he deserved an even higher mark than the A-minus he took when asked the same thing earlier this month during another House hearing.

"The tools we have at our disposal are limited, but saying that, I'd give myself a little higher [grade], in that since I became secretary of Energy, I've been doing everything I can to get long-term solutions," Chu told Issa, the panel chairman.

Issa, who had called Chu to testify about DOE’s handling of stimulus funding, pounced almost immediately on the secretary’s response. “@energy secretary just told me he gives himself "higher than A-" on #gasprices (!?!),” Issa posted on Twitter, promising to post video “as soon as I can.”

The Republican National Committee obliged with the tape and a complete transcript of the exchange.

After the hearing, Chu insisted he was only going along with the question when he gave himself a grade higher than an A-minus. “The grade I gave myself and the department had to do with the context of the tools the department had,” he said. “There’s lots to be done. There’s much more to be done. Anything that the administration can do to bring down gasoline prices it will do within the grounds of what it can do because we do feel the pain of the American consumers.

“This business about letter grades, whether it’s an A or an A-minus, I said in the context of the tools we had,” Chu added. “But let's try to rise up above letter grades of this and that, because again we will do our best with what we have.”

Sticking to the school theme, Chu said “there’s not an exam” on gas prices, adding: “Well, actually the exam is my record and my record as secretary of Energy and what I’ve done.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 3:00 p.m. on March 20, 2012.